I covered his mouth again, giving him a weary look to remind him of what I’d just said.
“And you’re here now, asking me if you have to lose those things with him to have me?”
He nodded.
In another life, the answer would have been a quick and resounding yes. With any other partner, it would have been a yes. But there was something so inherently different about Silas, different about my feelings for him, that made theprospect of telling him it had to stop feel like a cruel and unusual punishment.
“I want you to feel loved at all times, sweetheart.” I pulled my hand away from his mouth and slid it around his cheek, my fingers stretching around the side of his neck and into his hair. Silas leaned into me like our bodies were made to fit together, mold together this way and all ways.
“I don’t want you to scene with anyone besides me, but the rest…” I paused. Thought. “I have more questions about the kissing.”
“Ask me,” he rasped.
“Does it make you hard to kiss him?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s more of… like a warmth in my chest. Like a hug.”
“A mouth hug,” I murmured, chuckling under my breath.
“We don’t do it a lot. Just…sometimes it happens or, no. It doesn’tjusthappen.”
Anyone else would have been a no. Anyone else wasn’t Silas.
“I understand what you mean,” I said. And, somehow, I did. “No more scenes. Lincoln is not to be dominant to you in any way.”
“Yes,” he agreed, breathy, still pressing his cheek into my palm. He reached out, grabbing both of my thighs with his hands for balance as he swayed closer to me.
“No one is dominant to you except me.”
“Yes, Marshall.”
He used my name again like an honorific, and it was embarrassing to admit how badly it made me want to melt into the floor.
“The rest is…fine.”
His entire face changed, morphing from worry to shock to a relief that had his eyes filling with tears. Silas blinked hard, forcing them down, and he practically crawled across the spacebetween us until he was balanced in my lap on a barstool that was definitely not rated for both of our weights.
“Do you mean it?” he asked, our noses brushing together, lips inches apart.
I’d only kissed him once.
I wrapped one arm around his waist to hold his balance, pressed my fingers into the back of his head with the other.
“I’m always your Dom, Silas, but I won’t always tell you what to do,” I said. “Does that make sense? I don’t want to dictate every facet of your life, but when I give an order?—”
“I’ll follow it,” he said.
“In or out of the bedroom.”
“Yes.”
“I meant what I said before, that I won’t ever do anything to jeopardize any of your relationships. I won’t ever ask you to do anything that will hurt you—or anyone else, for that matter. I won’t put you in danger, even though sometimes it might feel like it.”
Silas moaned, hips rocking against mine.
“Give me some limits,” I said. “Tell me how far I can go.”
We were almost too close together for the conversation to be as balanced as I needed it to be, but it was impossible to keep my hands off of him. I’d already shown so much restraint, and Silas tested my resolve at every turn. With his bravery, with his honesty, his talent, his unbridled passion for his work…for me.
